Agro-ecological analysis of the value of the natural component of manufactured or engineered goods: The cases of agricultural land and engineered seedsBy Comlanvi Sitou Akibode

Introduction

Greek Goddess

Despite the depth of Durkheim, Weber and Marx’s human and social based approaches for socio-economic development, capitalistic and industrialist foci of recent human activities have outpaced the natural aspect. The intrinsic value of nature in the living or non-living beings (human, plant, mineral, animal etc.) have not been placed at the cross point of human economic and social development. Instead, use-vale and exchange value have dominated. Ecological economics defined as a discipline that integrates ecology with economics, is intended to solve this problem of value. Ecological economics had made tremendous progress in bridging ecology and economics, especially in defining new approaches of valuing nature. However Burkett (2010) finds that ecological economics approach is not yet pluralistic and the definition of value is not yet holistic and that integrating Marxist analysis would give the holistic and pluralistic dimension that ecological economics seeks to achieve sustainable development. He suggests ways to integrate Marxism conception of value and class relationships into the ecological economics framework. I base my analysis on Burkett’s book “Marxism and ecological economics: toward a red and green political economy”. The book surveys and discusses ecological economics and ways Marxism could make ecological economics more holistic and helpful to achieving sustainable development. I acknowledge the potential contribution of Marxism to ecological economics. It could be argued that the economic analysis of the value of natural resources is not comprehensive and there is a need to deepen the nature-human dichotomy and extend it to transformed or engineered natural resources. To convey the analysis, some fundamental questions could be asked. What value would a plant, mineral, animal, in its natural form, place on itself, if it were to participate in the production decision making process? What value do we attribute to the natural component of built or engineered goods? These questions would be answered through specific examples such as the value of the natural component of an agricultural land and the value of the natural component of an engineered seed. The first example stresses on the “natural value” embedded in a seed that has gone through a technology transformation (engineered seeds). The second example expresses the idea of the “natural value” of the natural component of a farmland that has undergone a transformation through human actions (use of chemical fertilizers etc.) First the ecological economists’ views on value will be presented, followed by the Marxism criticisms to ecological economics in the second section. Marxism contribution to ecological economics will be presented in the third section. In the fourth section, an analysis of value applied to agricultural land and engineered seeds will be presented.

Nature’s value and Ecological economics

Ecological economists see Nature from two broad perspectives. The first group sees it as “direct source of value”, while the second as “basis of enjoyment” - Nature as a direct source of valueEnergy as primary commodity: This line of thinking has been led by the ‘embodied-energy’ theorists, who argue that the ‘primary input’ into production is energy. Since ‘“free” or “available” energy’ is required for the production of all goods and services, and cannot be substituted for by other inputs, it is viewed as ‘the only “basic” commodity and . . . ultimately the only “scarce” factor of production’. The presumption here is that ‘a production-based theory that can explain exchange-values’ must grant a logical or chronological primacy to one particular input of material production. It is also presumed that the main purpose of value theory is to ‘explain exchange-values [market prices] in economic systems’. In short, the embodied-energy theory ‘is really a cost of production theory with all costs carried back to the solar energy necessary directly and indirectly to produce them’. The approach closely and consciously parallels the Ricardian labour-embodied theory of value, with energy replacing labour as the primary factor of production. In the same way, an analysis called “Sraffian” analysis provides some support for those who argue that ecological economics should ‘do without a general theory of value’ in the sense of Marx. The eco-Sraffian view thus posits that production and monetary exchange-values depend upon ‘labor, resources, and environmental services’ in all their physical and biological diversity. In this sense, it treats nature as a direct source of valueThe ecosocialist This line of thinking within ecological economists is interested in generalizing the Marxist theory of exploitation to include the exploitation not just of labor, but of nature as well. Since Marx’s analysis of labor-exploitation is developed in terms of the category surplus-value, this ecosocialist project has necessarily involved the treatment of nature itself as a source of value and surplus-value. However, these ecosocialists, unlike the energy-value theorists, do not conceptualize natural resource use in purely energetic terms; or they, at least, argue that production is reducible to energy processing only at a highly abstract level. In their view, nature-exploitation involves the extraction of profit from biologically and physically variegated eco-systems; it thus calls not for an energy theory of value but for a genuinely ‘biophysical’ or ‘bioenergetic’ theory of value. - Nature as a basis for ‘enjoyment of life’ Georgescu-Roegen and Daly are most of the prominent proponent of ecological economics. They do not define value in terms of the primacy of any one or several factors of production. For them, the value of any production derives from its satisfaction of human needs and wants, although this end-product must be adjusted for the costs of its production. From their perspective, the ‘true product’ of production ‘is not a physical flow of dissipated matter and energy, but the enjoyment of life – account being also taken of the drudgery of labor’. Value thus derives from the ‘psychic income’ or ‘immaterial flux’ generated by production, even though low-entropy matter-energy and purposeful human labour are its fundamental preconditions. Stated differently: ‘Service (net psychic income) is the final benefit of economic activity. Throughput (an entropic physical flow) is the final cost’.

The criticism of Marxism to ecological economics

Marxism has criticized ecological economists not to referring to the natural conditions of production as ‘gifts’ of nature. These gifts are freely appropriated by capital whenever they provide conditions enabling the extraction of surplus labor from workers and its objectification in vendible use-values, without adding to the wage-labor needed to produce commodities. Nature’s gifts can serve as free gifts for capital, in other words, because even though they are not products of wage-labor, they still provide use-values that capital needs to produce and realize surplus-value. Marx argues that such gifts ‘create use-value without contributing to the formation of exchange-value’. Moreover, ecological economists do not root the question of nature’s value in capitalism’s basic relations of production: ‘freeing’ of labor-power from the land and other necessary conditions of production, and the reuniting of labor-power and production conditions only as wage-labor and capital producing commodities for a profit. This has led to an identification of nature’s value with its use-value, an acceptance of exchange-value and money as natural ways of valuing nature, and a one-sidedly quantitative perspective on nature’s value. For Marx capitalism’s fundamental form of valuation is rooted in what John Bellamy Foster has termed a ‘metabolic rift’ between people and nature. According to Marx, capitalism is a social form of human-material production; hence it still has material, use-value requirements. But these requirements are obviously quite minimal compared to the requirements of a healthy and sustainable interchange between economy and nature. This is precisely why it is so crucial to analytically distinguish capitalist reproduction from human-natural reproduction in general. Moreover, “this situation continues today whenever public or communal lands are privatized, and whenever corporations are given freer reign to exploit national forests and other natural resources. Marx’s analysis contains a powerful ecological indictment of capitalism’s valuation of natural wealth. It highlights the contradiction between capitalism’s reduction of value to abstract labor time and nature’s contribution to wealth production.” It also emphasizes the tensions between value’s monetary forms on the one hand, and the natural environment on the other. Money is homogenous, divisible, mobile, and quantitatively unlimited, by contrast with the qualitative variegation, interconnection, locational uniqueness, and quantitative limits of natural and ecological wealth.

Potential contribution of Marxism to ecological economics

The potential contribution of Marxism to ecological economics is developed namely in terms of: - The relations between nature and economic value Marxism analysis adds to ecological economics through the analysis of class relations that ecological economists lack in their analysis. The latter fail to link nature’s monetary valuation to the underlying relations of production. Indeed, Marxism uses materialist class analysis to distinguish between use value and value. It also shows that “a generalized market valuation is rooted in the commodification of labor-power based on the separation of the producers from necessary conditions of production, starting with the land. “ - The treatment of nature as capital Marxism treats the concept of natural capital as an instrument of neo-classic economic imperialism, which fails to include class relations in the analysis. The treatment of nature as a stock of productive assets, the monetary valuation of natural resources; and the definition of sustainable development in non-social-relational terms as simply sustainable growth of wealth in general.” The addition from Marxism is about including social-relational analysis in ecological economics that would help its pluralistic role - The applicability of the entropy law to economic systems Capitalism experiences periodic accumulation crises rooted in the tensions between capital accumulation and its natural (human and environmental) conditions. But the crucial insight of the Marxist perspective is that, even apart from accumulation crises, capitalism’s ecological-entropic dynamics produce a never-ending crisis in the natural conditions of human development. This permanent crisis can only be overcome through an explicit communalization of production and its material conditions by the producers and their communities. Rather than preaching autonomous changes in human values, Marxism challenges each and every one of us to join in the struggle for collective-democratic forms of production and resource-allocation more appropriate to human development as a material-social process. - The notion of sustainable development. Since, human developmental considerations, which are central to the co-evolutionary approach, have been largely absent from, or treated in nonholistic and/or non-evolutionary ways by, common property analyses, The co-evolutionary character of human development under Marx and Engels’s communism is evidenced in its treatment of the land as a common-pool resource, its commitment to environmental management of land use in the interest of future generations, and its diversification of human needs and capabilities in less matter-energy intensive and more natural scientific and aesthetic directions. Marxist focus on production relations as material-social relations can enhance the integration of the three basic dimensions of sustainable development. All-round human development is shown to be the central consideration in Marx and Engels’s projections of communist property, planning, and non-market resource allocation. The co-evolutionary character of human development under Marx and Engels’s communism is evidenced in its treatment of the land as a common-pool resource, its commitment to environmental management of land use in the interest of future generations, and its diversification of human needs and capabilities in less matter-energy intensive and more natural scientific and aesthetic directions.

The agro-ecological analysis of transformed or engineered natural resources

- Agricultural land Agricultural land in its natural and pristine form could be seen as a non-human made asset. Therefore there could be a value that is not human-made and that could be called “natural value”. The market value may be derived from the use-value or the intrinsic value, which may include “natural value” and “added value” (added by the farmer), through usage of his labor and materials (machines, tools, fertilizers etc.). It is important here to use the “value added” notion to appreciate how much the farmer adds to the value already contained in the land, in its natural state. One should recognize that what “should” belong to the farmer is what he has added not the whole value (including the natural value) of the land. Now, if the land is purchased, rent or owned by any means, the price of owning land or its rent is fundamentally, market value, or cost of securing (in case of war, invasion, or efforts to secure land), or value attached (which could be a use-value, or intrinsic value or option value etc.) This understood, there is a dichotomy between the value of the natural land and the value added by the farmer. Meanwhile the farmer can destroy the value of the natural land (negative value added). The farmer, most of time, put in his accounting the value added and eventually the exchange value of the land (which could reflect the use-value) not necessarily the “natural value”. When the farmer grows a food from the land, he uses the natural value as well as the “added value” to deliver the food. The “added value” could be considered as coming from a cost, and this cost is integrated to the cost of the food produced; meanwhile “the natural value” may not be seen as a cost and may not appear in the cost of the food. Farmer for equity purpose “should” give the land its “natural value” (if land has to claim its due). But because land does not directly ask for its due, this value goes to the farmer and add to its profit. The problem is when the deterioration of the land, due to its exploitation by the farmer, cannot be compensated. This creates an environmental degradation problem. To solve this environmental problem, nature should and ought to be recognized fully as an actor in the capitalistic production and get remunerated for the natural values. - The Genetically Engineered Seed Engineered seeds are transformed natural seeds for specific purpose (higher productivity, higher climate tolerance …). The natural seed has what I call “natural value” and the human-made value, “the engineering value” is the “value added” by the seed engineer. The engineered seeds are transformed natural seeds for specific purpose (higher productivity, higher climate tolerance …). They are produced for market namely by GMO firms. One of the impacts of commercialized GMO seeds is the potential loss of biodiversity, including the inability of the non-engineered seeds to be used by farmers. Either the non-engineered seeds can no longer grow productively after using the engineered seed on a specific soil, or there is no more incentive to use the non-engineered seeds because of their relative low yield. This loss of biodiversity would be mainly attributed to the occurrence of the engineered seeds. Whether the engineered-seed should be held responsible of this loss of biodiversity or not is disputable. For instance, in a competitive world a more competitive product may have the right to eliminate a less competitive one. In that sense we can assume that the GES (Genetically Engineered Seed) is just a more competitive product that has the right to eliminate a less competitive one through cannibalization (all ethical considerations held constant). When it comes to fairness, not ethics, how do we understand a product that uses a product and eliminates it, without “paying for it” its real cost (including the natural value)? Here the GES is a transformation of a non-engineered seed that I consider natural in this discussion (it may not be). It does not pay for the natural value (not the market value that could be paid for through market price) for the seed. The market value is not the natural value of the non-engineered seed. The natural value may be considered as the value of the seed as a natural being playing a role or giving a service in the overall bio-system, in the overall bio-diversity health. This price is missing, giving rise to companies to promote overwhelmingly GES; threatening natural agriculture, people’s (including farmers) right to the nature. If GMO firms could pay the price of the “natural value”, that would influence their active participation in the GMO markets or even help halt some behaviors negative to the whole society. This may have the potential to help regulate the GES market economy in a more ecological and justice standpoint.

Implications

The ecological economics analysis is a scientific approach to solve flaws in classical and neo-classical economic theory. It takes into account ecological issues and values by integrating them in the economics analysis. The question of values is been largely discussed within proponent of ecological economics. The major flaw of ecological economics, as said by Burkett (2010,) is the lack of social class relationship in analyzing the question of value. Burkett suggests, from a Marxist perspective, a consideration of social relationship along the line of ecological economics to make ecological economics a holistic discipline.

The analysis of agricultural land and engineered seed above, not only takes into the inclusion of natural resource into the realm of ecological economics, but also includes a relationship component between natural resources and capitalists. For the earlier, natural resource or its presence in a transformed good has “natural value”. For the latter, natural resources or a natural component could be considered as an actor who could be asked for “his rights” or “to pay his due” when participating in the production system. In that sense, natural resources are full actors of a productive and consumption network, as we can see it in the ANT (Actor Network Theory) approach.

Moreover, the analysis adds a dimension of the value of the natural component of any engineered or transformed natural resources. The distinction between a full natural resource and a component of a natural resource in an engineered or transformed “natural resources”, addresses well issues of agricultural lands and engineered-seeds. Agricultural land being affected by new technologies (pesticides, chemical fertilizers…), and natural seeds being genetically modified. It also addresses the issue on how to regulate the rise of GMO in a fair, equitable and sustainable way.